[nfbcs] Help for older students

Wed Jul 20 22:05:41 UTC 2016

Getting a degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or any Computing related discipline is a good start for your education, but it will only guarantee you that you are educated.  Converting that initial education into a desirable and marketable skill is much more difficult to do and requires diligence and ingenuity.  Just being on this list is even a way of assisting yourself in your job search.  Did you know there are actually currently about 5,000 jobs open in the Computer Science/ Programming arena in Seattle right now?
When you hear that about 85 percent of jobs are given out on who you know, they are not exaggerating in any way!  I currently have a friend where an organization that wants to hire them is actually writing the job announcement by using their resume as a guide.  This is how you get the person you really want when you have a competitive process, even with State and local governments, Federal positions, and even with many large multi-national corporations.  You have to be qualified enough to get into the top five or three people in the initial pool of applicants.  If they can get you to the interview, then they can choose the person they want!
I have a blind friend with a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering and a MBA who was told by her friends at a major company that they just opened up a job one day and she should apply.  She applied that day and they closed the position the next one.  They had been looking for and creating the right position for her as they had known her for two years before she was to graduate from her graduate program.  I actually paid for her registration at the CSUN conference during her first year of grad school.  She even was able to present part of her master's research there and this major company happened to have representatives in the audience to listen to her presentation.  She interviewed for two positions with them, and Amazon over the past few months, but was "picked" for this one.  They told her in January, that she did not make the cut for the other position, but she should keep on trying.  She was just rewarded for her diligence with a six figure position with a nice bonus each year.
I am fifty-one years old and every job I ever had, whether when I was sighted, low-vision, or blind has been through a personal connection.  Before going back to graduate school, the past three jobs I had were all "created" for me.  Two of them I turned in the resume and filled out the application after I was employed.  I am a PhD student now, but have been "creating" my next job over the past two years.  Instead of just doing research, and attending a conference to present it when it is selected, I have also strategically attended other conferences (at my own cost and sometimes by getting some other entity to pay for it) as a way of meeting the right people or just letting the "players" know that I am still in school and will be on the market in a few years.  There are people over the past twenty years that I have assisted in getting other positions that are now in strategic positions to assist me if I need them in my job creation/search as well.   
All the connections I make at conferences/ meet-ups, webinars, or anywhere I encounter people is an opportunity for me to make a job connection as well.  There have even been some places where I have specifically been happy that I was the only person that was there that was blind, because I knew it would make me stand out enough for the people to remember me when I contacted them again.       
I have a saying that I like to use that I think fits the situation very well.
"It is not who you know or what you know, but who knows that you know what you know"
I can quietly sit on a bus, train, or plane  and listen to a book and let my guide dog and I fade into the background, or I can choose to interact with people around me and casually let my education and background "slip" out in the conversation if needed.  I can let them think I am "just" a blind person in the room, or let them know about the Textile engineering degree, Industrial and Systems Engineering degree, the Psychology degree, the Master's degree in Human Computer Interaction and the continuing work on the PhD in Human Centered Computing.  Occasionally, it is too my advantage to also let them know about the three Paralympic Games and the US records in Track and Field, or they can never find out about it.  Either way, the skills I have in my technical field are totally irrelevant if I don't interact with the public in the best manner that suits me.  
   I am teaching an undergraduate Computer Science course this summer at Georgia Tech.  I currently have my students working on their end of the semester projects.  They begged me for a take-home exam for their final and I let them fall for that trap.  When I released it on Tuesday in class, I let them know that they actually have two take-home final exams.  The first one or the first half is fifty points and their groups can work on it together or by themselves, but they all have to come to a consensus and turn in answers as a group.  The second half of the exam is under the school honor code and they have to do it by themselves.  I gave them the first part for one major reason.  I told them that you cannot like each other, or even hate each other, but you need to learn to work with each other.  Most importantly, you will see each other later in life and business after you graduate.  The current dean of the college of Engineering here at Georgia Tech and I went to undergrad together in the early 80's.  I have five tenured professors in my department, including the chair of the school of Interactive Computing that went to undergraduate and graduate school with my baby brother!
For the last example of how interacting with people is just as important as the education you have and the skillset you possess, one of my blind mentees that I met a few years ago wanted to come here for the PhD program in Biomedical Engineering.  I came back to school two falls ago and cleared the way for him.  I went and met the right professors on campus and told him to contact.  He took it from there, by making a great GRE score, graduating from Cornell with honors, but also by "grabbing" his future and making the leap.  I have also been working on the right connections for his fiancé to get a position when she moves here this fall.  
So, I say listen to the people on this list, use us for any information that you can pry from under our fingernails, and keep on interacting with the rest of the world.  Grab that bull by the horns and wrestle it to the ground!

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbcs [mailto:nfbcs-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Deborah Armstrong via nfbcs
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2016 5:17 PM
To: NFB in Computer Science Mailing List <nfbcs at nfbnet.org>
Cc: Deborah Armstrong <armstrongdeborah at fhda.edu>
Subject: Re: [nfbcs] Help for older students

>college was about 20 years ago and nothing came of the promises with placement or a second so called guarantee after completing a specialized programming program graded by it managers.

It's my opinion but I think all these job training programs are more marketing than substance. You get yourself some skills and you market yourself to your friends, their friends and anywhere else you can think of. And who would want a guaranteed job anyway, sounds like make-work for the handicapped!

Though I've been a rehab client several times, DOR never actually did much in helping me score the jobs. I used DOR to fund all the classes I wanted to take, but I think searching for jobs is best done without agency interference!I got this current job because I was interviewing for another position here and went beforehand to the restroom. My husband, who had driven me to the interview helped me find the restroom before he left, and happened to see the current job I now hold posted on a notice board next to the wrestroom. He used his phone to take a picture of the job posting and over dinner later read it out loud to me. He knew it would be something I wanted, and he was right; I immediately set about with all my resources to score this, the perfect job for my desires and abilities.

Before that, I found my job at Stenograph when a friend of a friend described it to her friend, and said they were really looking for a person with a special skill set. 

I got my job at Caere because I was an OmniPage user. I just called and badgered them; said quite truthfully that I liked the product and wanted a position starting out in support.

I got my job at Aveo, a company that's now defunct because I got lost at a job fair when I went to relieve my dog. The nice man who helped me back to the convention center  started talking about he couldn't find a programmer with strong writing skills and I sold him on agreeing to look at my portfolio. Thank goodness my dog needed to go out that afternoon!

And I've gotten jobs off Craigslist and from room-mates too. A job you hunt for yourself, and earn yourself is the job you want, one you'll work hard to both acquire and keep.

As for skills, there is so much free training out there now. If, say I wanted to learn Windows Powershell, I can download books from Bookshare, get stuff from Youtube, (some is not as visual as other training), listen to the excellent Coding 101 podcast segments on Powershell and above all, write lots of powershell code to do hobby stuff, like catalog my MP3 collection, or make registry editing easier. I don't want to learn PowerShell right now, but for you maybe it's Wordpress, or PHP, or JavaScript, or something. I want to learn Python because it looks fun, and I want to learn Java so I can write some apps. So figure out if you can learn a skill where there's plenty of free training online and just go for it! Then when you know it you can start looking for work doing it.

So stop trying to get some agency to "get you a job";  it's just silly!

--Debee

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